Unable to delete app in iTunes Connect with “Developer Rejected” status

after 16 hours of non stop research trial and error, and headbanging I have found a solution in apple developer's forum.

Apparently there is a bug allowing your binary to pass verification and upload, but then to get rejected by iTunes Connect system. And you don't get any email explaining you what happened!

If your App is for both iPhone and iPad, you probably have something like this in the Info.plist file:

You should completely remove the CFBundleIconFiles~ipad parameter and include the iPad icon in the Icons files array instead like here:

That's all folks!

Let me know if that helped you!

I worked around this by preparing a version of my app that was good enough to be approved by Apple, even though it wasn't where I wanted it to be yet for the first release. I submitted it just before the 180 day deadline but set a future release date on the Rights and Pricing tab in iTunes Connect. Apple approved the binary and I continued working on the app with no further warnings about the name expiration. I was even able to move the release date further into the future to give myself more time.

I don't know what would have happened if my submission had been rejected by Apple or if I had rejected it myself. That might have been okay, but I preferred to play it safe and submit something that met all the review guidelines.

Now I'm still not ready for a public release, but ready for beta testing. I submitted my latest version for review and Apple approved that, too. At this point, even though the app still isn't publicly available, I can generate promo codes and give them to beta testers and they can download the app from the App Store using the promo codes. In my case this is better than using up more of the 100 devices available in my developer account. The trade-off is that each beta version I want to share has to go through the Apple review process.

Anyway, setting your release date in the future does let you meet the 180-day upload deadline without releasing something before you're ready. When you're ready to release, you can submit your final version, make sure it gets approved, then move the release date to the desired date.