At "Apple scale"? You can make that case, sure.
But the first? IBM was a cult to it's customers back in the day "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", etc.
Other earlier brands had their dedicated followers.
^ IBM was the brand in a time when no computing products existed for the Man on the Clapham omnibus.
Earlier examples of consumers having a parasocial relationship with a branded identity exist, just not particularly in the computing tech field.
Dresses, artworks, perfumes, performers have famously had cult like followings in times past - Lisztomania had fans camping out for a glimpse and prime seats.
Surely there were other product launches people queued for before?
People queue for films and sneakers and consoles and graphics cards and cars. I’m sure freaks queue for CPU architecture launches.
People camped out when the Nvidia RTX 30xx series launched a few years back. There was a massive line of people, a real wtf moment. That’s just a graphics card.
I hadn't heard about camping for the 30 series, thats nuts.
"Customers"? "Brand"?
Customers==people that purchase records, tickets, merch, official fanzines, etc.
Brand==Manufactured PR image sustained by managers, PR staff, consultants to industry, etc.
That lessened with the rise of PC's in the office and the spread of non-IBM PC clones. It's a dim memory today and has been for three decades and more.
Not a cult you could easily break from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_from_a_gun