Last week at CES, RIM unveiled new features and functionality in PlayBook OS 2.0, which is due for a public release in February. Although much more polished than the initial release, we found that it still lacks certain features — including core advantages like BBM — that we would expect to see on a RIM tablet.

Yet the most important feature that PlayBook OS 2.0 lacks is a wide variety of quality apps. To find out how RIM plans to fix that, we sat down with the man tasked with ensuring that the company (re)builds a large developer ecosystem, VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders. In a wide-ranging and in-depth discussion, we not only heard RIM's plan for getting developers enthused for PlayBook, but also got some details on RIM's next operating system, BlackBerry 10.

Unfortunately for both RIM and any developers who may be interested in its BlackBerry 10 platform, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has publicly said that BlackBerry 10-based smartphones won't arrive until "the latter part of calendar 2012." That is a long time to wait, with what looks like precious little good news in the interim. Will BlackBerry 10 be worth the wait? Will RIM find ways to keep developers engaged until it arrives? Read on.