Is it okay to rely on CocoaPods when deploying an app?
Solution 1:
Yes, you can add as many cocoapods to your app as required, it makes no difference regarding the count of packages.
Many of the most popular apps have a dozen or more packages. However, whether or not you should be using that many packages is an entirely different question.
Also, your point about the MIT license is a good one. You should also be acknowledging all these package creators within your app somewhere. For example, in my app's Settings page I have a tableview row that lists the packages my app uses. App Store review will not check for that but it I think it's required with the MIT license.