virtualhost woes

[eluser]TheFuzzy0ne[/eluser]
I disagree. DNS should not be necessary unless you're hosting your server using a domain name, and it's externally accessible. DNS records basically help map a domain name to an IP address. In your case, you have your hosts file to map the domain name to the IP address. The server will receive the domain name, and map it to the appropriate directory (as per your hosts file).

Yes, some local networks use DNS, but that's to save them from having to update the host files on 50+ PCs.

If you're using Firefox on your Mac, you can download an addon called Firebug. Firebug is extremely useful for developers. One of the (many) things it can do, it show you how long each request for a resource took, and what the response was. This might help you see where things are going wrong.

I'm 90% certain that DNS will not solve your issue.