After scratching my head at this for awhile ...

We are talking here about the Admin Theme Options that allow tweaking of theme elements, through the (relatively standardized?) Dashboard UI? Which the theme developer provided for, in the 'guts'?

I'm still fuzzy, how it comes to be that we are left in the lurch on the defaults, in the first place. I've installed a lot of themes - and then tweak them - and I don't notice issues with ... 'omg - how come this thing doesn't look like the picture on the box'!

Interesting post ... but did I come in halfway through the lecture? ;)