Tapestry, Wicket and Appfuse? You're making my point for me: The thinking you're using now to praise Rails and attack Clojure would have been just as valid seven years ago to praise Java and attack Ruby. All you're really remarking on is the maturity of the communities in question, but you're presenting it as a commentary on the usefulness of the technology.
And Clojure has been known for a good two years now, but I would not have said Clojure was popular two years ago. It didn't have a lot of regular users, which is what you're observing when you say people aren't solving "real problems" in it. I'm not sure I'd even say Clojure is popular today. I'd say it's still roughly where Ruby was in 2004 — lots of excitement, but still lots of growing to do.
I studied Clojure and I hope really cool stuff comes out.
When Rails came out it solved all kinds of new problems. For one, by using metaprogramming a whole bunch of files were eliminated. As soon as Rails came out I was much more productive than I was with Tapestry or Wicket. Not so with Clojure.
The metaprogramming capabilities in Clojure greatly exceed those of Ruby, so that's a bit of a weak argument if you're impressed by things of that nature. Also one shouldn't forget about Clojure's concurrency model and functional purity which lend themselves to correctness and scalability.
Just because it doesn't necessarily better solve your class of problems doesn't mean it's unsuitable for other people's.
And Clojure has been known for a good two years now, but I would not have said Clojure was popular two years ago. It didn't have a lot of regular users, which is what you're observing when you say people aren't solving "real problems" in it. I'm not sure I'd even say Clojure is popular today. I'd say it's still roughly where Ruby was in 2004 — lots of excitement, but still lots of growing to do.