Happy endings do happen. Sometimes.

So I am delighted to report the existence of at least a slightly cheery ending in a troubling legal case involving an Apple support company and one of its customers.

You might remember this difficult tale.

In what was a landmark case in Greece, an Apple support company, Systemgraph, decided to sue one of its customers when he complained (very mildly) about its service on his blog.

Dmitri Papadimitriadis, the Greek physician who was bold enough to declare publicly that he was not pleased with Systemgraph's service, was unhappy that his iMac seemed to come back from that service in a rather worse state than it went in.

So he took to a blog forum, where the most critical word he used to describe Systemgraph was "shoddy." Systemgraph, whose skin appeared a little thin, sued him for 200,000 euros.

Let&39's hope his new iMac works perfectly.

Once this story echoed into objective ears, Systemgraph seemed to have second thoughts about its lawsuit and withdrew it. Still, Papadimitriadis believed he deserved a new iMac--and a little compensation for his legal costs.

Well, 167 days after his original request for a new machine, I can report that Papadimitriadis has a new iMac. He told me that it had been jointly funded by Systemgraph and by the retailer from whom he originally bought the iMac.

This occurred after the intervention of the Greek ombudsman and several very large male nurses who just happened to be passing by. (Yes, I am joking about the nurses.)

Papadimitriadis seems happy to have at least received this much. However, he told me that there had been no movement on his legal expenses.

He was also a little downhearted that despite getting a petition together and trying to contact Cupertino, there was "no response from Apple despite the signatures."

Indeed, despite repeated attempts to contact Apple (I tried too), the company has never commented on the case.

Still, Papadimitriadis' stoic stance means that there is some precedent now in Greece for yelping (mildly) online about poor customer service. Moreover, he told me: "The case has been discussed here in PR marketing / social media seminars and a university course."

And how many of us can ever say we have been the subject of discussion in a university course