I don't even see how one could compare Rails and Meteor. They are intended to solve two very different web development problems.
Discover Meteor, the most popular book about Meteor, even uses Middleman for their blog and website - because using Meteor for something like a blog or information based site just makes no sense at all.
"..or information based site.."
The entire internet is information :P but I know what you're trying to say
It is production ready. We use it a lot. Mongo? Well, yes, you are stuck with Mongo - there isn't good database support outside of that, and as for Cordova? I have no idea why they baked that in either :)
It IS good though, the ability to out put really good applications quickly, with simple code shouldn't be overlooked.
I'll repeat my thoughts from back then – Meteor is a great experiment that tries out some interesting ideas for what web apps might look like in the future.
I maintain that it's absolutely not production-ready, or even very good. I don't want to store data in Mongo. I don't want Cordova baked-in (wtf is that about anyway?). But we absolutely need people playing with this sort of technology. I just wish the hype would die down a bit…