In regards to some of the criticism of this stage design, I think it was okay for stage 4. As some have mentioned, we have seen what a bigger MTF on Etna can do at this time of a GT (not much more), so really, it is a case of the endurance of a three week race playing just as big a part as the high mountains, in terms of sorting out the GC riders. Making stage 4 harder with more difficult climbs before it wouldn't have done much....just look at stage 2.
What this type of stage 4 does do, is instead of approximately 30 riders believing that they could top 10 the Tour before it (without benefiting from a breakaway), we now have approximately only 20 believing in that possibility, which leads to less potential congestion and crashes in sprint stages with less riders fighting to hold their position (and not lose seconds).
I think that an interesting aspect in recent parcours (particularly the Tour) is that there is a lot less distinction between stages now. 20 years ago, when the riders reached the mountains, they genuinely reached the mountains; which is to say that they would race over proper HC/cat 1 climbs and that stage would maybe even reach 200 kms. But also back then, such a stage was even more significant for the fact that they probably hadn't hauled themselves over anything more than a hill as yet. Nowadays, the difference between the "mountain" stages and the "hilly" stages is a lot less, and maybe that means that it isn't as big a shock for some riders when they do reach the so called high mountains, and as a result time losses are not so great. I don't think that this is merely clinic related.