Apple will end software support for 16 devices this fall across four product lines, with the Apple Watch seeing the most sweeping cull in the product's history. The full extent of this year's software drops became clear with the announcements of macOS 27 Golden Gate, iPadOS 27, tvOS 27, and watchOS 27 at WWDC this week.
What do you use the pencil for? Just writing and annotating? A $30 3rd party pencil will work perfectly fine.
You only really need the Apple Pencil if you want to go into drawing