Steve Jobs was my Apple hero for many years. He is long gone, and so – no surprise –  is the level of tech support he demanded from his company.

It’s an old and familiar story. The Apple products are great, but their vaunted Tech Support is suffering under the weight of success. Deep down, corporations are all about money sooner or later.

Problems with my computer were causing disruptions in my life and my blog for a while. They were minor problems, but they had to be dealt with. I was losing heart.

But just like Galahad,  out of the midst and confusion came a new, young, friendly, and unbelievably skilled Apple helper named Ander Koehler. He helps me in minutes; he and his boss Perry seem to know every bit of the insides of Apple machines. And most of it is done on the phone.

Andrew (photo above)  and Perry don’t work for Apple. They work for themselves in a quiet skiing town in Vermont. And they provide the best tech support I  have had in my long life with computers.

I love working with Andrew. He’s the nicest kid I know. It’s hard to believe he’s a kid, and it’s hard to think he’s a geek. Courtesy and empathy are not synonymous with tech support.

He combines skilled, courteous, intuitively sensitive, and helpful support. I’ve called him about 20 times by now. He has helped me every time and in minutes or seconds. He is nothing like tech support people often are.

He enters the computer and looks around himself. Quite often, he fixes the problem himself. 

He doesn’t make me nervous and isn’t contemptuous of my tech ignorance and clumsiness. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he isn’t free.

I call him with the dumbest of problems, and he never makes me feel as dumb and clueless as I often am. I never know with Andrew whether to thank him or try to adopt him. He has parents he loves, alas.

Maybe it’s something in the Vermont drinking water or the fresh air.

I think Vermont is where the last lovely and empathetic, and tolerant people of the world live and go to die. Andrew could make a million dollars a minute in New York City or  California; he would rather live in Vermont and play his music in churches (yes, churches and clubs) and live with his wife, a school teacher.

I’ve never met Andrew face to face,  but he feels like a brother I have known all my life. And wow, does he know how to fix a problem with an Apple computer. If he weren’t so nice, I would wonder if he wasn’t the incarnation of Steve Jobs himself. He doesn’t seem to have a nasty bone in his body.

And yes, you can read about MacNurse right here, and I’ll give you Andrew and Perry’s number at MacNurse:802 472-1727.

I have used Apple devices all my working and writing life, and I plan on doing so for the rest of my life. Steve  Jobs was a hero to me; he understood that some people yearned to be creative but were not natural techs and knew little about the devices they used.

Jobs often sat on the tech support desk at Apple and took great pride in Apple’s reputation for providing the best tech support of any large computer company in the world. For decades, they came on the phone immediately, helped enthusiastically and efficiently, and kept people like me busy and productive. I couldn’t do most of my work without Apple’s fantastic way of organizing my thoughts and pictures.

This is capitalist America; sooner or later, money always rears its head for corporate enterprises. Apple has grown tenfold since Jobs died; they do so much more than he dreamed of, and of course, become way too large and complex to provide the same level of support as they did when I started writing on one of the first Imacs.

I was the type of person Steve Jobs aimed at when he built his company: creatives, not techies. He provided tech support. We created the profits. That was the deal. We didn’t need to learn much about how to dial Apple Support.

It’s different now, and here I am saying there is help, just as good. Mac Nurse is not free, but it is surprisingly inexpensive. You can see their rates on the website.

If you recognize yourself here, there is hope:

His name is Andrew Koehler; write down his number (8024721727.)  I work with Andrew, but Perry has just as many followers. I am at peace when his face pops up on my screen (see above). It will soon be fone.

Let’s face it.

If you love Apple computers, as I do, you will need some help sooner or later.

You can’t do better than Mac Nurse. Usually, when I’m on the phone with tech support, I expect the person on the other end of the line to throw up after choking on my tension and incompetence. The computer does a million different things; I know maybe 20 of them.

Apple is not yet another greedy corporation, but they are edging that way. They need some quiet time to take care of the zillions of followers they now have.

Now there is help, at least for me. I see MacNurse as a miracle for me and the world that I do.

. If you don’t believe me (we live in a suspicious time), try it for yourself MacNurse In Stowe, Vermont.

When I have some trouble, I call Andrew. This happens regularly  (Apple devices are no longer simple; they do many things Jobs never imagined). I am now facing long wait times, a stressed phone system that often clicks off,  inexperience and confused kids on the front line, and a cumbersome and frustrating process.

There’s no point in lamenting what was.

Whatever it was is changing all the time. I won’t bitch about it, but I change when I can. I accept change and adapt. But in this case, I need help quickly and efficiently, and courteously. That’s my man.

Yesterday, the headings in my bookmark bar all suddenly vanished. I pushed the wrong button and couldn’t access my blog or e-mail. Andrew was busy today, as he often is, but he made some time for me, and the problem was resolved in seconds.

I could not have figured this out independently; it was supposed to be simple, but it never was. And I didn’t have an hour or so to try to get help from Apple.

I decided to tell others about the minor miracle I stumbled across.

My work life rides on my Apple computer and phone and keyboard, etc.; when they don’t work, I’m shut down, and it makes me crazy to spend an hour or two getting help (that’s just the wait time), and sometimes, not getting it fixed right away. This has created a significant hole in my life.

I’ll be honest, there are many things – software and apps –  on devices as diverse and complex as Apple devices, and it makes me crazy when any of them break down. Crazy and anxious. Apple Tech Support was always so outstanding I didn’t need to be crazy for long. I never thought of outside help.

I doubt it will ever be the same. Imagine how many tech-savvy people Apple would hire to help the millions of people will Apple computers, laptops, and iPhones. I can’t blame them, but I sure miss them. Once in a while, I still get lucky.

Enter my new Apple hero, Andrew Koehler, and he and his boss Perry work out of a small company in Stowe, Vermont  (not precisely Silicon Valley) named MacNurse. I don’t usually plug commercial enterprises on my blog, and I’m not getting paid for this one either, but I felt it was a decent thing to do to share this good fortune with the many people who access my blog on Apple devices.

They help.

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Correction. In the first version of the piece, I said I had contacted Apple 50 times in recent months. That typo was already corrected in the blog post (I can’t fix things on Facebook.) It should have said about 20 times, which is bad enough. It says that now.