Hmm..... you brought some interesting points here:
I have no experience with videography so what I pen it here may not make sense. Just thinking out loud - would VR help in videography as it is a different animal all together. And I have one friend who does that alot and seems like he is always using tripod with joystick kind of head to control his shots. But again, I have no experience in this so would assume, if Nikon, Canon or any lens Co. wants to go into the field of serious videography, perhaps a study group with some experts would be necessary.
For Macro/Micro, I am sharing strictly from personal experience only. With 105mm VR, it works great on still subjects and most of the time, if DOF is not key, F/4 does the trick. But F2.8 comes in handy when shooting fast flying insects like bees and houseflies. Bees not so bad cos they are in bright day light. Insects that works in the dark, the subject are unforgiving. I usually lower the resolution, set to 2.8 and use continuous shuttle. VR is off too. Make sense. Share with me your experience. I can use some tips too.
Hey I didnt realize Canon has a 70-200 F/4!!! but we have 24-120 f/4 and they don't!!!