[vetinari]

On zeroconf aware systems, it is still expected to be resolved via multicast; service discovery works by looking up srv/ptr/txt records on __$service.__$protocol.$hostname.local.

How it will behave will depend on your specific stack. Zeroconf aware (Macs, iOS devices, Linux with Avahi - i.e. most modern distributions) one will use multicast, zeroconf unaware (Windows) will use your DNS resolver. Devices (printers, etc) are a toss of a coin.

[chupasaurus]

I'd like to note that a default behavior of Avahi in Debian/Ubuntu/RH/SUSE prevents resolving *.local via unicast DNS to avoid this collision.