Well, the enlightened people don't need it any more. That is definitely a point. But for all those who are not enlightened, if you really feel that you could be really mindful without it, you can experiment and see what happens. Quite often for many people they want to get away from the mental noting and then they try not doing it. But then what often happens is their mind is more busy than before and they don't even know it because they have stopped using the mental noting. So you do need to be careful about letting go of the mental noting just because you don't want to do it.
To a certain extent it's like a child riding a bicycle. A lot of little kids when they first ride their bicycle they have training wheels, little baby wheels on the side of their bike so they don't fall off, fine. To a certain extent the mental noting is a lot like this, but it is a bit bigger than that. Because the little wheels only help balance a bit, they don't develop any wisdom for the little kid. The mental noting is a great way to develop wisdom, especially when you are more detailed with your mental noting you see more clearly where your thoughts are.
So you may not want to let go of that practice at all. As to perhaps the mental noting of footsteps, lifting, moving, placing and whatever, some people feel the words are a little too big, that they get in the way. I have often said it is ok to just go, mhh, mmhh, mmmhh, as long as they are three distinct different sounds. If "lifting", "moving", "placing", etc. are too big for you, if you feel they are getting in the way, fine, then just use "mhh", "mmhh", "mmmhh", little things like that. But you do need to be careful not to just throw away the mental noting, just because you think you should be able to do without it. The mental noting is a great technique.