I mean tightly control their licensees, so the market isn't flooded with crummy apple clones. Not talking about the technology, here!

Back then a computer was $4000, which included significant margin. Nowadays, computers (yes, even Macs) are much cheaper, and the margins are lower. Apple sells a new copy of OSX every year to most of its customers, with or without a new computer. This could make them money, if tightly controlled.

I'll be really surprised if Apple doesn't agree to simply make a deal with Psystar to manufacture clones for a licensing fee. It isn't that radical - Apple licensed Mac clones back in the late 80s - early 90s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clone#The_first_Macintosh_clones ). My uneducated guess is that Psystar has been negotiating for a licensing agreement for a long time, and then calculated that an outright court battle would land them a better deal than paying the fees initially suggested by Apple.

That or they're a fly-by-night outfit.

Worked under 6.0.5 as well, as long as you have the VT extensions enabled in the BIOS.