Comment by ward

> Bring up Finder: ⌘␣ "finder" ⏎

I had a finder window open still on another workspace. Doing this still does not give you a new finder window. You then have to press cmd+n...

> Bring up Activity Monitor: ⌘␣ "am" ⏎

If I wait a second before pressing enter, spotlight decides that instead of Activity Monitor, Dropbox.app is now the top hit for this query.