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Sounds to me like you need better software. I use: Chrome, which has a thread per tab and spins other stuff out into separate threads also; GIMP, which in the 2.9 tree will happily use multiple cores for all filters and image operations; pigz/lbzip2, which will scale to as many cores as you have; Inkscape, which again will happily use multiple cores - and there's a massive performance difference between setting it to one thread compared with four threads on this 'ere old AMD APU; LibreOffice, which is at present not multi-threaded for most operations but does have OpenGL and OpenCL acceleration support; and for stuff that is presently single-threaded (like processing images through Guetzli) I can use GNU Parallel to automatically run as many jobs simultaneously as I have cores (or more, if I fancy shuffling work off to other computers via the network - seriously, GNU Parallel is acebest.)

It's why I bought a quad-core AMD rather than a dual-core Intel back when I built this system, and it's why I'll be getting as many cores as I can afford when it eventually needs an upgrade - and yes, I'll gladly trade single-threaded performance for more cores, just as I did when building this box 'ere.

EDIT:
Here's GIMP 2.9.7 running the Sharpen by Synthesis filter, for instance. Both stages of the filter are using all four cores throughout - and, sure enough, it's significantly faster than the old single-threaded version in the 2.8 tree.

 

Err... you absolutely can. That's how GIMP is using all four of my cores to run the Sharpen by Synthesis filter - which is, you'll note, a single task.

 

No, it doesn't. Here, let's demonstrate with a resize from 4000 pixels wide to 8000 pixels wide...



See how all four cores are in use there, too? That certainly ain't carrying out multiple tasks - it's just resizing the image. How about arbitrary rotation - let's say, 41.7 degrees clockwise?



Once again, all four cores loaded with a single task on a single image.

It's entirely possible to split a single task across multiple threads.

That's something you might not come across often, but it's situation normal for me. Literally everything I do in GIMP scales across all four cores, from complex stuff like image sharpening to simple things like changing the colour levels or resizing the image.

 

If I had to guess, I'd say you're running GIMP 2.8.x - which is single threaded. I quote:

Upgrade to 2.9.7, which is the version I'm running, check that it's set to use four cores (or however many cores you have) in the settings, and try again - you'll be able to replicate my results perfectly then.

 

Now try something that's actually computationally intensive: select a biiiiiiig chunk of the image - like, more than half - and run the Heal Selection filter, or select the whole image and run the Sharpen by Synthesis filter. I guarantee neither of those will be almost instant!

At least you now understand that you can spread individual tasks across multiple processor cores, and that tasks which in Photoshop are single-threaded are multi-threaded in GIMP (2.9 onwards, anyway!) Which brings us back to the reason I started posting in the thread: you claimed "99% of software out there" doesn't see the benefit of multiple cores; what you actually meant was 99% of the software you use doesn't see the benefit. 99% of the software I use does see the benefit - which brings me back to my original point: you need better software!

 

And yet it fails to scale to multiple cores while GIMP, a free software project, manages it just fine. Poor show, Adobe, poor show.

Thankfully, despite working in the print media industry, not a single one of my clients has ever had a problem with me submitting stuff created in GIMP, Inkscape, LibreOffice, and other disgusting Commie packages. Which is good, 'cos I sure as heck don't fancy going back to Windows as a daily driver!

 

That and the lack of proper non-destructive editing. Thankfully, I'm only using it to tart up photographs and occasionally rasterise a vector that Inkscape decides should look like a late Picasso piece - colour matching for print is officially Someone Else's Problem (which probably involves loading my images into Photoshop!)

Sadly, the development roadmap still has 'high-end CMYK support' as 'no,' meaning there's no chance of seeing it any time soon. We have already got the multithreading in 2.9, though, along with OpenCL acceleration and high bit-depth support, which is definitely somethin', and 3.2 is supposed to be focused on adding non-destructive editing capabilities - so perhaps there's hope around 3.3/3.4 time?