There are two reasons for learning anatomy.
1) Learning structures, names, and relationships so that you can do well on the test.
2) Learning about the human body, its complexity, and the marvel that it is.
For #1, the cadaver dissection isn't that helpful. I think many who criticize it or don't spend lots of time with it frankly see anatomy as #1. Does learning about the chorda tympani or the pterygopalatine fossa help you in most branches of medicine? Probably not.
Prosections and atlases are nice - they help you see the relationships better and demonstrate things well. But it's hard to appreciate it unless you find it yourself. To be sure, anatomy cadavers are not completely real life - preserved, things stuck together, colors are all gray. But it is a real human body, and the structures are there. It can give you an appreciation for things - finding the gastric artery, for example, can be a difficult task - yet if a surgeon nicks it the patient may die.
As someone currently in pathology residency, doing autopsies is the best way to learn anatomy, but this clearly isn't practical for 1st year students. Do I learn from a book? Sure. But until you actually do things and see things for yourself, it isn't going to be something that is important to you and memorable.
IMHO, this goes along with many med schools eliminating microscopy time in favor of projections, computer images, etc. It is the "dumbing down" of medical education, so that you learn what you are told and the responsibility is on you to memorize lists, not to discover for yourself and make your own connections. Sure, you can learn things well enough to do well on the board exams by never leaving the library, but does that help your future patients? Perhaps one may argue that anatomy lab doesn't help future patients either, and it probably doesn't if you approach it with a certain attitude. It is a great privilege to be able to learn from an actual human body.
Is there anything I learned in anatomy lab that I couldn't have learned by just using computers and books? Well, in terms of structure and relationship, probably not. But it is a memorable portion of my medical education. Taught me to appreciate the wonder of the human body, to realize the incredible variation that goes on, the degrees of normal and abnormal, how disease can impact function, and just how tightly controlled everything is.
I shudder to think of a generation of future doctors trained without microscopy and gross anatomy. Perhaps I overestimate the impact, but I think well-trained and well-rounded people, trained to think and discover, make the best physicians.