Different goals. I habitually look for ways to minimize code, and making that pointer available helps you avoid repeating code that just uses a different global(s). But I can see if you're really tight on ram, that might be the wrong trade off. Unfortunately, if (like me) you want to use it in a library where you don't know how many tasks the user is going to require, using globals to pass the data doesn't really work.
I would argue that it doesn't make the simple case noticeably more complicated. One extra parameter that you set to NULL in the call, and then ignore in the task handler until you need this facility.
Thanks,
<mike