I do a decent amount of front-end work, so I'll have a browser and code editor side-by side on a 29in monitor. In this situation, I very much prefer horizontal tabs. So that's one use case.
Exactly this. Plus, I rarely have over 20 tabs and even when I'm close to that number I mainly use the 10 first ones. Vertical tabs is a cool feature but both modes are useful depending your needs.