Not too long ago I wrote about one of my perceived issues with today’s variety of tablets; that is, the lack of multi-user solutions to such things as native email access and other personal information.

To recap – I don’t want guests to pick up my tablet and have unfettered access to my email.  This may not be an issue with web-based email, where you can make a point of signing off after each email session, but it’s definitely an issue with native apps and their cached credentials.

But a strange thing happened today.  RIM launched the Blackberry Playbook, and it just dawned on me that one of its most-maligned “features” could actually serve to solve the multi-user conundrum.

I’m talking about the Blackberry Bridge method of pairing to your (Blackberry-)smartphone and gaining immediate, seamless access to the email and calendar stored therein.  I use “stored” loosely, since there’s no requirement that the data actually resides on your smartphone, but rather that your smartphone is configured to access that data around the clock.

So there it is – you can sit your tablet on the coffee table and nobody can access your email because they can’t pair it to your smartphone.

Would that feature be enough to reverse a recent tweet I made, decrying the Playbook as an also-ran? (at least, for the short-term – which can easily become a very-long-term in the technology industry)

No – since you won’t see me sporting a Blackberry anytime soon.  And for the larger audience of tablet-yearning consumers, I still say “no” – since I’m not aware of many consumers who share my particular brand of concern.

Now, all hope is not lost.  Some time ago BMW and RIM announced a hook for the iDrive interface allowing you to access text messages and emails on your Blackberry through iDrive.  This interested me – mildly – since I like iDrive and I like technology.  But I don’t love it enough to require my car to link to my text and email messages on my phone, particularly when those two things are at the bottom rung of today’s legions of socially-connected solutions (ie, Twitter, Facebook (ugh), and myriad BBM-competing freeware).

But the point is that it’s within RIM’s ability to extend Blackberry Bridge to non-Blackberry devices – and perhaps there would be more consumers willing to emerge from the dark and confess that they, too, seek some sort of user-partitioning when it comes to personal, private data on their tablets.  Perhaps this could be RIM’s great differentiator re: Playbook vs. iPad and co.

Hrmm.