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I don't think anyone's ever disputed that Nathan wasn't a geeky genius polymath. I mean, he studied physics under Stephen Hawking and was the CTO of Microsoft. The claim is that he's a geeky genius polymath who is also a patent troll.
Of course, The technology wasn't good enough 20 years ago. They could have made it, but it would have sucked. Apple's success was making an iPhone right when a iPhone became possible due to the confluence of technology.

When the iPhone was pre announced, I remember hearing that some from Palm didn't believe apple could make it at the claimed battery life.

The iPhone didn't invent any of that. Lots of people, including Microsoft, did in fact build things as close to that as to the iPhone for years before. It's just that they lacked a certain something.
That something would be making the user experience "smooth". I had an assortment of PalmOS devices, played with WinMo devices and settled on a Sony Ericsson P-800 which was my main phone when the iPhone was launched. I could anything an iPhone could do, but I didn't have transitions, scroll inertia and drag to scroll. The P-800 was good, but the iPhone was great.

It's very easy to assemble a set of functionalities. It's not easy to make it fun to use.

That's what Apple did.

Exactly. That's why it's silly to talk about iPhone as an "idea" that others could have had before. It's a Product, not an Idea.
He may or may not of thought of it, but there is a lot of work between that and "creating."
Could have but didn't.

Implementation > Ideas

...and if General Magic's software wasn't buggy, they might have done it.
was it buggy or just insanely expensive?

(I actually bought one off ebay for the Shelf of Dreams at my office. they are interesting to play with.)

It was pretty buggy - here is a link to one account: http://www.grosen.dk/jp/Diary_of_a_Disaster.html
Ha, strange to see a friend in that article.

Also, the Tony mentioned went on to do the iPod and the Nest.

or if Palm could evolve theirs.
If Nathan Myhrvold had invented the iPhone, he would have invented the iPhone.
its funny how people want to think that the iphone was the first smartphone. Palm, Blackberry, and Nokia offered several smartphones and touch devices. The biggest difference was multitouch, capacitive screen and convincing people to buy one.
I think the biggest difference was that it was the first smartphone that was easy to use. That convinced regular people to start buying smartphones (and use smartphone features).
I had those smartphones, and they were never a joy and something I got from work. The iPhone was the first time I wanted one for myself.
I've invented the beer powered helicopter. It's great. It's a helicopter and it runs on beer. I've a cool drawing of it that works, in the drawing.
Oh yeah? Well as soon as Steve Jobs popped out of his mom, he cried out iPhone!

So there.