First off, welcome to the forums!
Hmmm... I'm getting consistent behavior, but it's the behavior you don't want. Command-return puts you in row selection mode; it doesn't leave the text cursor active in the Project cell. (This is on a 10.6 machine with my normal prefs set aside, so the app starts up with all the from-factory default settings.)
If you can figure out under what circumstances you're getting the behavior you prefer, emailing steps to the
support ninjas and filing a feature request would be a great idea. Can't guarantee we'll adopt that as the default behavior, but we'll certainly give the request consideration. Thanks!