page revised January 2, 2009 (removed lots of stuff which has lost its relevance in the last decade)
What can I find on Jim's page?
2005 - present I'm currently employed at Apple Inc. in Cupertino, CA where I work in the CoreServices group which is part of the Internet Technologies department. The CoreServices group maintains much of the code in the Mac OS X CoreServices framework including most of the Carbon APIs and CFNetwork.
2001 - 2005 After years of making things work better and faster in Mac OS 7, 8 and 9, I moved into the Mac OS X File Systems team. Most of my time there was working on the WebDAV file system -- the file system that is used to mount your MobileMe (.Mac/iTools) iDisk. I also worked on the URLMount framework (the code that mounts a network volume from a URL), the KernelEventAgent (the low-level part of the system that take care of telling the rest of the system when file system volumes are mounted, unmounted, or are having connection problems), and on various other network file systems that Apple ships (SMB, FTP, NFS, etc.)
1996 - 2001 Before that, I worked in the Mac OS Releases department in the Stability and Performance group for over 6 years on the Mac OS 7, 8 and 9. Most of my work there was making the File Manager, Disk Cache, File System Manager, Virtual Memory, Memory Manager, Start Manager, etc. (parts of Mac OS you don't see, but that you want to work correctly) perform better with no bugs. I also contributed bits and pieces of code to MacsBug, the best low-level debugger for Mac OS 9 and earlier systems.
1995 I worked briefly at General Magic as a Developer Technical Support Engineer. There, I provided support to developers of products for Personal Intelligent Communicators that used General Magic's Magic Cap operating system. General Magic spun off its Mobile Computing Division as a company named DataRover Mobile Systems, Inc. which later changed its name to Icras, Inc., which is now no longer in business. I guess I made a wise decision going back to Apple.
1989 - 1995 Before General Magic, I worked for Apple Computer, Inc. where I was a Developer Technical Support Engineer in the Apple II Developer Technical Support group (1989-1990) and then in Macintosh Developer Technical Support (1990-1995). As a Mac DTS engineer, I supported various parts of the Macintosh operating system - in particular, I learned a lot about classic AppleTalk, the Program-to-Program Communications (PPC) Toolbox, AppleShare, the Deferred Task Manager, the Alias Manager, disk drivers, the File System Manager, the Desktop Manager, the Finder, and the File Manager. While in Developer Technical Support, I answered lots of questions, I wrote lots of documentation, and wrote lots of sample code.
1976 - 1988 Before Apple, I worked mostly as a Repair Technician / Field Engineer / Customer Engineer. Those are all names for jobs where I fixed various kinds of electronic equipment including aviation navigational equipment, biomedical electronics, medical imaging equipment, main-frame computers, mini-computers, data terminals, printers, etc. At my last technician job, I worked at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS. There, I was given a few chances to design and write software in my spare time and found I liked programming personal computers more than I did fixing them. During the same time that I worked during the day at J.C.C.C., I also worked as the first Forum Leader of the Apple II Developers Forum on AppleLink, Personal Edition (now America Online). That part-time job put me in contact with Apple and next thing I knew, I was in California working for Apple.
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