> For your use case unmodified F4 will bring up Spotlight now where you can type.

Yes, this is what I've been doing during the beta, and it's far less useful than Launchpad IME so far.

> If you want more precision unmodified F4 followed by CMD+1 will allow you to search only apps.

It looks like I had previously done so, and now the setting is 'stuck'. I.e. it's the default view — I can still go 'up' to search across stuff, but F4 takes me to an app launcher by default, so that's one drawback eliminated (thanks).

As an aside, I've learnt just now while testing this that F4 has an awkward asymmetrical input buffer. You can open+close instantly with two quick presses, but the same does not work to close+open. I'm not really complaining so much about this, just mentioning it!