Apple pulled out all the stops today in one of the biggest Apple events ever

I’m sitting down in my hotel room. It’s evening, and I’m taking a deep breath.

Today we had one of the biggest Apple events I can remember. Between hardware and software, Apple announced at least six new products today, seven if you include Apple Fusion Drive, and a whopping 23 new products if you include different models and build configurations.

Here’s the full list:

• New iBooks software
• New retina 13″ Macbook Pro (two build configurations)
• Mac Mini (three build configurations)
• iMac (at least two sizes, each probably with at least two build configurations)
• Apple Fusion Drive (not a standalone product, but very cool, and an orderable option)
• 4th-generation iPad (six main models)
• iPad mini (six models)

Tim Cook spoke to the huge number of new products — and his team’s effort — at the end of the event.

“We told you we’d deliver amazing innovation this year,” Cook said, “and I hope you’ll agree we did.”

Added to the list announced today, Cook mentioned iOS 6 with hundreds of new features, OS X Mountain Lion, which works with iOS like hand and glove — which is one of iOS’s great advantages over Android — the new iPods recently announced, the new iPhone 5, and the previously announced retina-screen MacBook 15″.

“It’s been an incredible year … a truly prolific year of innovation for Apple,” he said. “We hope you love these products as much as we’ve loved creating them.”

It is a staggering list.

When you look at Apple as a product company, it doesn’t have a huge number of SKUs … four main product families (Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad), perhaps 15 total products within those, and then some 50 or so versions of those products.

Any way you slice it, Apple has refreshed a massive proportion of its product line today. In addition, Apple has done something that it rarely does: Osborn a product. The announced new iMac product line won’t be available until November — the 21.5″ model — and December, for the 27” version.

It’s impressive chutzpah, based on the capabilities of possibly the most sophisticated supply chain in the business. And it’s an impressive line-up for the holiday shopping season.

At the end, Cook thanked the teams at Apple, “the most talented and innovative people I know.” They’ve done their job. Now it’s time to see how the other titans of the industry — Microsoft and Google — will answer.

We won’t have to wait for long.