Macs aren’t the only thing that use mDNS, either. I have a host monitoring solution that I wrote that uses it.

Even on windows sometimes depending on the target host, I’ve had to type host.local. (Final dot to do exact match) instead of host.local

This didn’t seem to affect other domains. I’m assuming it was due to special handling of .local

mDNS hasn’t been a just-Apple thing for decades. Do you still call it Ren-dess-voos like the Gaston character in Beauty and the Beast?