Accessing .local domains is slow on Mac OS X

This appears to be a fault in Mac OS X Lion, where it takes 5 seconds to resolve .local domain names, even if they are hardcoded in your /etc/hosts file. You can work around this problem by using Charles's DNS Spoofing tool intead of /etc/hosts, however you'll experience the .local DNS resolution delay when not using Charles. I recommend using an alternative TLD such as .dev.