Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I'm uncomfortable with the words "humans are still apes" because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation "humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago." dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.

Humans might have adaptations which set us apart from all the other apes behavior-wise, but we share a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos more recently than they share a common ancestor with orangutans. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say we split off from the apes millions of years ago, when we're still more closely related to some of the apes than those apes are to other species of ape.

Edit: already pointed out in the grandparent, I guess this is what I get for only looking at the local context.