The text in the book "ATL Internals (2ed)" which references attributes being deprecated is writen as supposition. The author seems to draw this conclusion from the fact that the Visual Studio 2005 release changed the default from enabling attributes to disabling attributes.
"but it appears that Microsoft has abandoned the idea because the ATL wizards no longer default to attributed code." (ATL Internals, 2nd Edition)
I can find NOWHERE that Microsoft has indicated that attributes are deprecated. None of the discussions on MSDN refer to this. None of the developers have admitted this that I can locate on the WEB. Their documentation implies that it is still, fully, supported; yet it does not work. The Wizard UI is still documented with no reference to deprecation. It's pretty unprofessional in my opinion.