This. There’s something about actually taking a pen and writing something down that seems to create mappings in the brain.
But that’s assuming they retain their notes. Notes differ wildly in their retention requirements, anywhere from “the end of the meeting” to “the end of time.” You could have a corporate policy that the latter category is verboten, while making room for the other side of the continuum.
I had a 99.99% analog education, and I agree.
Neither do I. I would consider a surgeon a “smart” person and some time ago I had one ask me “What are we doing today?” and after I replied he made a note . . . on my body. Astronauts are smart people and they, and a lot of other people use notes (i.e. checklists) every time they perform certain jobs.
Who hasn’t walked into a room and couldn’t remember why they were there? I’ve read that short term memory lasts around 30 seconds. After that, if it doesn’t become a permanent memory, and I didn’t make a note, it’s gone.
And returning to the room you came from usually doesn’t help. 
I was never a great notetaker. But I usually got by recording bullet points, due dates, and questions that needed answers.
Yeah, that’s pretty stupid. If you’re in a meeting just talking through something, maybe it’s a little less stupid, but if you’re trying to sort out networking and hardware to backend your new S3 service, you prolly want to be taking notes.
As for discovery, oh yeah, some of the large tech firms have a seven day window on Slack messages and then “poof”, away they go- ya can’t find what they don’t keep.
I also take copious notes or have my EA does so during my senior leadership team meetings. I do not have a good memory so notes are essential for me. That said, I probably take notes at times when I do not need to. There are situations where I may be better served by jotting down a word or two rather the detailed notes so that my focus is on the conversation. This is one reason why I have my EA take notes during my senior leadership team meetings. It allows me to facilitate the meeting and concentrate on the issues at hand rather than on my notes.
Regardless of my note taking practices, it is a certainty that I would not be smart enough to be at the table with Steve Jobs. 
I didn’t work for him; I was interviewed in the '90s, but turned down the job offer, mostly because Jobs was a sexist entitled dick.
Before and after the interview I was at software demos or meetings that included Jobs. Brilliant, but an absolute dick. He was insulting to his own staff, especially women.
When I was senior leadership and lived half my life in meetings, I often thought people took notes just to keep awake or to look like they are taking everything seriously. I would look around and wonder why people are taking notes on every little thing said. I just wrote down the important stuff I needed to remember.
There’s something to be said about being present in the moment and actively contributing to the discussion. Some people take more than notes and it ends up shifting their focus, noticeably. That said, I don’t think it’s an indicator of intelligence, but could be an indicator of a person’s focus in the moment.
As for profitability… with as senior Phil is, I have no doubt he is aware at minimum a general level of the app store’s headcount and some costs. That said, it’s been reported on for a long time that Apple’s managers or leaders are not focused on, nor report on, P&L for their team or department. They’ll either get approval for their requests for headcount or resources, or not. I doubt Phil knows or bothers with the amount nor costs of the servers and internet bandwidth the App store requires, only whether it’s performant in enabling downloads to Apple customers.
I think there are at least three parts to this.
The only we we actually learn a concept is by engaging with the concept, questioning it, and relating it to other concepts. Without this labour, something we have just perceived is likely to never transition from short term memory into long term memory.
Embodied cognition. We tend to cognitively map our tools to become part of us. That’s why writing with a pen or driving a car become so instinctive: the tool becomes projected as part of our body. I suspect something similar happens with thinking materials when they are made real — e.g., by writing them down.
Cartography. We are innately good at mapping out how to get “there” from “here.” This is true for getting around town, but it also functions when we need to find the scissors in the kitchen drawers and, I suspect, when we need to find where we wrote down that book that so-and-so mentioned.
Now, pen and paper (or marker and whiteboard, etc) may have some affordances that make it easy to take advantage of these bases:
All that said, there is some evidence that analog tools are not necessarily superior: “Based on the present outcomes and other available evidence, concluding which method is superior for improving the functions of note-taking seems premature.” (hat-tip to @mlevison for that reference 
).
My personal bet is that certain users using certain digital tools can achieve similar (if not better) benefits to the average user of longhand writing. Unsurprisingly, I imagine that the advantage goes to what you’re used to and what you’re good at …
… Except it still feels awkward to interact with a screen and keyboard while talking to another person, whereas writing does not. 
As for Jobs, this quote is a great example of the halo bias. Someone who is very good at something does not mean that that they are experts at everything.
To get more concrete, the design of meetings and of meeting objectives would be a strong determinant of whether or not notes are useful. Some meetings might be to make one single decision, while others might be for large-scale architecting of complicated projects. Outcomes of the former would probably be better if no one wrote anything down; outcomes of the latter would be disastrous if anyone did not write anything down.
I sometimes propose that the group go pencils down for a conversation. It’s mainly to create a time of non-commitment where ideas can be explored without the risk of premature commitment. It can be challenging for Type A people and I’ve had to ask an impatient person to step away from the whiteboard. 
Once we’re downhill on the conversation or have regathered shared purpose, we capture any specific action items however we like.
Sometimes an overly specific action item from a meeting is a sign that it should’ve just been told to the group by text, but banning note-taking wouldn’t prevent that.
Legal discoverability argument aside, it’s entirely possible that someone is present at their meetings who is in charge of taking minutes for the meeting and then distributing an edited version of those notes to staff and leadership following the meeting.
This is a slight tangent to the topic, but one aspect of meeting note taking that I find incongruous is that while in my organisation (legal) we encourage note taking by attendees at our meetings (particularly by more junior members) we are very reluctant to audio or video record these meetings and use the now available and generally good automatic transcription services to provide attendees with with an immediate complete record of who said what at such meetings. And, as you will be aware, AI tools are now becoming available to process these transcriptions to provide summaries of meeting transcripts and even provide action items for each attendee, which would make a reluctance to use recordings even more bizarre. I think the reason for this is partly the discomfort by people to have their meeting contributions recorded (at least in my area) and, no doubt, there is a concern with such records being later discoverable. So we continue to take rough notes at meetings and ignore the technology. I wonder how long this will continue …
Is this related to Confidentiality / Client confidence type issues maybe?
Great point - with the low cost of storage and the increasing performance and variety of applications of AI that we’ve seen, there’s less friction to having an AI record, transcribe and summarize the meeting - and for the ability to query the AI to give more details about a particular topic of the meeting or even playback a section. The AI would even be trained on who the speakers are and be able to note that in any transcript / summary. So, you could have the best of both worlds - full participation and detailed notes for what matters.
Meh. Another narcissistic egomaniac universalizing his own experience and assuming everyone’s brain works the way his does.
Good points. Thank you.
Steve created Apple.
He’s one of the few great businessmen of the last 50 years.
I’ve used both extensively and find I consistently stay better focused and remember the content of meetings better if I take notes with a keyboard than if I use a pen and paper.
I’ve seen plenty of people assert the opposite as if it applies to everyone. It doesn’t. Just because something works great for someone else doesn’t mean it will work great for you, and vice versa.
That can be very freeing for the kind of conversation where no one is expected to remember the details and what matters is where you all end up when you’re finished, not necessarily the route you took to get there.
Agree 100%. I think it’s important to let people use the tools that make them work most efficiently. For example, even with a freewheeling discussion, a notebook can be handy just to scribble a thought for later so I’m not interrupting somebody. It might be important. It might not. But taking a quick note (as opposed to “taking notes” in a more formal sense) - for some people - frees the brain to participate.
My canonical example of somebody who “doesn’t get it” is this article:
Two things come to mind, David Allen said this best, “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” It’s really a waste of brain cycles to try and remember a great idea in your head, when you can just write it down instead.
Writing is thinking, I don’t think I’ve really wrestled with a thought until I’ve written it down.